Following the Kyrgyz tradition, Manzura Orolbaeva welcomes guests with homemade bread and a saucer of melted butter. The bread is made from grain grown on their farm and the butter from the livestock they keep.

Agriculture is the main source of income and food for a large part of the local population in this mountain village of Kara-Dobo in southern Kyrgyzstan, but due to the dry climate and lack of arable land, it is difficult to grow crops here. Water is particularly challenging to access.

For Manzura, her nearest water source is a mountain spring located two kilometres away. Every day, this 63-year-old woman and her loved ones walk there and back, not once but several times a day, to bring back enough water for the people, animals and plants on their farm.

"You can live without gas; you can live without the Internet, but you cannot live without water," said Manzura.

Water is scarce not only in Kara-Dobo, but also in many other villages in this region of little rainfall. In the winter, it is cold with almost no snow, and in summer, it is very hot with virtually no rain. The main water sources are mountain springs, but they are often in hard-to-reach places. 

As a high-altitude country, Kyrgyzstan has been experiencing the effects of climate change acutely. Variations in temperatures are leading to unreliable precipitation patterns and more frequent peaks in temperature are causing aridity and drought, especially in mountain pastures.

To increase the communities’ resilience to these weather anomalies, experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) proposed the construction of an artificial glacier in the region as part of the “Shared prosperity through cooperation in border regions of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan” project.

Funded by the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the project is implemented jointly by FAO and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and is aimed at enhancing cross-border environmental and socio-economic cooperation between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan; it also works to build confidence and trust between local governments, communities and civil society organisations. The project uses сlimate-smart agricultural practices to preserve and sustain common natural resources.